2015-16

Fall 2015

 

RUSS 130 Masterpieces of Russian Literature in Translation

Special Topic: Ecologies of Nature and Literature in Russia

 

The relationships between Russians and their natural environments were represented in and constituted by literary masterpieces of the 19th and 20th centuries. Narratives of national history and identity helped shape the ways that writers such as Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky, and Platonov portrayed natural disasters, exotic landscapes, life in the countryside, and humankind’s struggle to overcome the elements. This course investigates how nature and literature interact in Russian culture and what it means to create environmental awareness.

 

Ecologies of Nature and Literature in Russia is a special topic for fall 2015. This course is listed as RUSS 130 Masterpieces of Russian Literature in Translation. 

 

Taught in English

Creative Arts and World Cultures Gen Ed Credit

 

 

2014-15

Spring 2015

 

RUSS 247: Literature and Fantasy in Russia

TR 3:30-4:45

 

This course explores the literary genre of fantasy, including the subgenre of science fiction. Through the lenses of Russian literature and film we will investigate old and new technologies, the relationship between mechanical inventions and the uncanny, and space travel to imagined worlds on other planets. We will examine how classical Russian writers engaged with the supernatural, science, and technology, and we will study how political ideology and resistance helped shape Russian fantasies and fears in the 20th and 21st centuries.

SYLLABUS

 

Fall

RUSS 440: Protest and Counterculture in Post-Soviet Russia

T 3:30-6:15

Counterculture is a hothouse for bold, original, and radical aesthetic innovation, political thinking and ideological beliefs. Forms of oppositional self-expression illuminate a given country's national psychology, social priorities and political problems. This course examines the sometimes blasphemous and scandalous voices and images of protest in the turbulent years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Outrageous street art by Voina, sensational musical performances by Pussy Riot, prophetic prose by Zakhar Prilepin, thunderous anti-Putin protests in Russia, and turmoil in post-Soviet countries are just some of the topics the course will address.

 

Student work in Russ 440 from 2012

 

Spring

RUSS 247: Literature and Fantasy in Russia

 

 

2013-14

RUSS/AH 248: Russian Visual and Material Culture